CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1  BACKGROUND OF STUDY

The satellite television industry developed first in the US from the cable television industry as communication satellites were being used to distribute television programming to remote cable television. Home Box Office (HBO), Turner Broadcasting System (TBS), and Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN, later The Family Channel) were among the first to use satellite television to deliver programming. Taylor Howard of San Andreas, California became the first person to receive C-band satellite signals with his home-built system in 1976 (Barnaby, 2002).

In the US, PBS, a non-profit public broadcasting service, began to distribute its television programming by satellite in 1978 (Seneviratne, 2015).

In 1979 Soviet engineers developed the Moskva (or Moscow) system of broadcasting and delivering of TV signals via satellites. They launched the Gorizont communication satellites later that same year. These satellites used geostationary orbits (Mark, 2008). They were equipped with powerful on-board transponders, so the size of receiving parabolic antennas of downlink stations was reduced to 4 and 2.5 meters (Mark, 2008). On October 18, 1979, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) began allowing people to have home satellite earth stations without a federal government license (Ray, 2001). The front covers of the 1979 Neiman-Marcus Christmas catalogue featured the first home satellite TV stations on sale for $36,500 (Ray, 2001). The dishes were nearly 20 feet (6.1 m) in diameter and were remote controlled. The price went down by half soon after that, but there were only eight more channels. The Society for Private and Commercial Earth Stations (SPACE), an organization which represented consumers and satellite TV system owners was established in 1980

Early satellite television systems were not very popular due to its expense and large dish size. The satellite television dishes of the systems in the late 1970s and early 1980s were 10 to 16 feet (3.0 to 4.9 m) in diameter, made of fiberglass or solid aluminum or steel, and in the United States cost more than $5,000, sometimes as much as $10,000. Programming sent from ground stations was relayed from eighteen satellites in geostationary orbit located 22,300 miles (35,900 km) above the Earth.

Multichoice Nigeria made an entry into the Nigerian market in 1994 in partnership with Multichoice Africa, a company born and bred in Africa, with a firm commitment to the development of the continent.

Their leadership in premium pay television technology and entertainment continues to keep Africa connected in real time with the world through the Digital Satellite Television (DStv) platform. They are a responsible investor devoted to promoting and projecting Africa, its successes and the aspirations of its people in a coherent and sustainable way by making significant investments in African TV and film production.

Since pioneering digital television in Africa in 1995, DStv has built a presence across 48 African countries, entrenching its position at the forefront of entertainment benchmarked against the best operators across the globe. DStv’s unparalleled family entertainment packages allow subscribers flexibility in price and choice without compromising quality or variety.

Multichoice is committed to partnering with local entrepreneurs, governments and broadcasters in Africa, tailoring its operations to suit local needs while maintaining the highest levels of service and product quality.

Multichoice Africa’s success grows its local partnerships, which have enabled the company to operate with an understanding of, and respect for, the many different cultures found on this diverse continent.

Multichoice Africa was one of the first pay-TV operations to launch outside the United States of America. It all began in South Africa in 1986 when M-Net was founded as one of the first two subscription television services outside of the United States. At this stage, Multichoice was incorporated to provide subscriber management services for M-Net.

Slightly more than ten years ago - pre-1993 - Multichoice was the subscriptions management department of M-Net, the company which introduced pay-television to South Africa in 1986.

In the early 90s, while conventional wisdom was that one could make a good business from analogue technology, Multichoice literally bet the bank on the idea that digital technology was the future of broadcasting in Africa. In 1995, Multichoice launched its premium DStv bouquet on a newly-constructed digital platform, which has grown to cover nearly 50 countries in Africa and adjacent Indian Ocean islands, offering a range of pay-television services with a variety of language options as well as enhanced television.

1.2 What is a digital Television?

Simply put, digital TV is a way of receiving your television signal in a digital format. This allows TV companies to broadcast better quality sound, a higher definition picture and a wider range of channels than ever before.

As well as better quality picture and sound, and more channels, digital television has many other advantages over its analogue predecessor.

One such advantage is the interactive nature of the service. Digital TV allows users to access further information by entering menus and interacting with their television in ways they had never even dreamed of before. In addition to this, viewers can listen to radio channels via their televisions and even watch archived programs via digital ‘on-demand’ services.

More modern digital TV services will also allow you to access the internet via your television set.

Digital cable TV is delivered via a network of high speed fiber optic cables. The most popular provider of digital cable TV is Virgin Media, whose TiVo box caused a storm by allowing people far greater freedom to choose how they watch TV than ever before.

TiVo allowed users to pause and rewind live TV, as well as giving them access to on demand content and the ability create their own channels by ‘teaching’ TiVo which types of programmers they like to watch.

While the picture quality is fantastic, the services innovative and the range of channels outstanding, this method of receiving digital TV is not currently available everywhere. Virgin Media are currently rolling their services out to an increasing proportion of the country, but this is likely to take some time.

1.3PROBLEM STATEMENT

Installation of DStv systems has always been too technical and complicated process. This type of installation already depends on numerous elements. In order to reduce the technicality, brought about by the need for this project which will make DStv installation a thing easy for the interested users by using this presentation slide thereby making it easier for any user(s) to install.

1.4AIM OFTHE STUDY

The aim of the study is design a web based presentation system that would enlighten users on how to install a DStv decoder and satellite dish in a very user friendly format.

1.5 OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY

The objectives of the study are:

• To make all the basic and vital information on how to install a DStv system available to its users
• To teach users how to install a DStv system by showing an animated video of the installation steps
• To enlighten users on how to troubleshoot basic problems that can arise from the installation of a DStv system.
• To provide a medium whereby users can share problems encountered during the installation and while using a DStv system.

1.6 JUSTIFICATION OF THE STUDY

Due to the technical details involved in installation of a DStv decoder and satellite dish, this study aims to make this readily available and easy to comprehend so as to make installation of DStv as simple as possible. This would in turn minimize the stress users of DStv go through to install and configure satellite dish and decoders.

1.7 SCOPE OF THE STUDY

This study will present the necessary tools needed to install and configure DStv decoder and satellite dish, the steps or procedural guidelines for the installation of a DStv. The study would use a web based approach to present this information, i.e. the information would be access and available via the internet.

1.8 LIMITATION OF THE STUDY

Due to the vast array of DStv technologies available, this study would be limited to the installation of decoders peculiar to our case study, Multichoice Nigeria. Also the illustration would be limited to a simple flash animation not a real video. This in essence is not a complete tutorial on installation, but an easy to use guideline for people with little or no technical background.

1.9 APPLICATION TOOLS

Adobe Dreamweaver CS5: This tool is used to design the web pages used in this study.

Microsoft Visio 2003: This is the tool used to draw up Unified modeling language (UML), diagrams during analysis and design mainly for the use case diagrams.

Adobe Flash C5: This tool is used to design the animation used in this study.

Microsoft Word 2007: This whole write up is typed using this tool and various formatting techniques from MSword are used to make the write up easily readable.